


Inner peace

by tyelperin



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Turmoil, Hurt/Comfort, Jefferson doesn't exist, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5978908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyelperin/pseuds/tyelperin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, and even if it's hard, they find ways to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inner peace

**Author's Note:**

> Rating chosen for the themes portrayed, it can get a bit intense. 
> 
> Not really any trigger warnings that I can think of. 
> 
> Special thanks to [parapines](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Parapines/pseuds/Parapines) betaing this when I asked out of the blue.

Nothing feels right. It hasn't for a long time. People are irritating, interaction grates on his nerves, and anger flows just below the surface of his emotions at all times. He feels aggressive and out of it, alone but overwhelmed. Not smart enough, frustrated, unable to put a word to what’s going on with himself.

He jumps from one emotion to another without pause and they’re all intense and tiring and he just wants this to stop, but at the same time wants it to go on because it fuels him. Getting up is easier when he’s angry, it makes projecting his hatred towards things and people that aren’t himself less hard. Helps with reaching the absolute acceptance of his own fucked up self. At least when he’s like this he knows what to expect, kinda. When things seem to be going fine, he can never know when they’re gonna explode.

Too many eyes are on him as he crosses the yard to get to the dorms, there are too many voices, too much laughter. The flowers fry his senses, the grass and the birds and the sun. It’s all grating on him. And he’s grinding his teeth, and that doesn’t help with the migraines but what the fuck ever. Who even cares?

“Hey, Nate,” he stops right in front of Warren, barely avoiding bumping into him. He doesn’t know if it’s a good time to be social, but maybe, just maybe, it’ll help today. “What’s up? You pulled a Houdini on us.”

It’s not helping.

“Fuck off,” Warren frowns, Nathan is close to shoving him out of the way. “I just want to be alone.”

He knew that befriending people other than Victoria would be taxing in many ways, and that acceptance had a cost. He also knows that he’s being unfair, but he’s too mad to care. He’ll care way too much, later, when he’s alone and feels the weight of it and thinks about the consequences. But now, now he just wants the situation over as soon as possible. Now he needs to leave.

“We are…I’m worried. Take your time if you want to, I guess? But maybe you need to…I don’t know, get out of campus, catch a movie?”

Nathan stares, and the anger bubbles up and rises and reaches his throat, thick and hot. He doesn’t need a babysitter. What the fuck do they think about him? Was this Victoria’s idea? Does he really seem so incapable of taking care of himself?

Just when he’s about to explode, to scream at Warren to get fucking lost, it retreats and he feels nothing but exhaustion. He’s so tired of everything, so suddenly, and why shouldn’t he accept anyway? Warren is waiting, and he should just go. Leave school for a while, get away from a situation that’s making him lose control. Sounds good.

“Ok.”

Warren smiles.

xXx

He doesn’t feel better after the movie, or when they’re back at the dorms and sitting in Warren’s room. Mellower, but not better. Maybe better isn’t the right word anyway. Warren is talking about something, and he should focus. He tries.

“You could totally see the mic at some point,” Warren says, and Nathan stares. “How’re you feeling, though?”

“Off,” he answers. Warren hums. “Like…shit, I don’t know. Just. Fuck.”

Warren nods, as if he understands. He could, if he tried. Nathan does know that Warren has his moments too. That he’s insecure, afraid, anxious. That some days he has to knock on Nathan’s door just to stop thinking, to sit on the floor with Nathan’s headphones on listening to whale songs and breathing deep. This, though, might be too hard to understand.

“Is it like July?”

July was bad in ways that Nathan isn’t ready to talk about. Sean did some shit, he reacted, everything went tumbling down, and Nathan fell with it. It’s not like July, and that at least is good.

“Nah, dude,” he doubts anything would ever be like July, but he keeps it in. Won’t jinx it. “I’m…mad. Like real fucking mad, but for no reason?”

“Dunno, there are many things to be mad about. Wanna talk about it?”

He shakes his head, and Warren nods, and he’s grateful but also close to breaking down.

xXx

It’s been a week. Things seem to be changing. His irritation is fading, his anger is less sharp, his emotions less arbitrary. There’s never going to be a normal for him, whatever the fuck they mean by normal, and he wasn’t really suffering before things got calmer, but it was tiring and it’s a good change of pace. It’s…good. He guesses.

Warren, on the other hand, is sitting on the floor of Nathan’s room with his head down and his fists clenched tight. Nathan is waiting. Prompting Warren to talk never helps. So he sits, by his side but not too close, until Warren sighs and unclenches his fists.

“I want this to end. It’s too much, I can’t keep going on like this,” Nathan inches a bit closer, just to let him know that he’s there. That he’s listening. “What if I fail? I don’t think I was made for this, I’m not smart enough.”

Telling him that he’s smarter than, probably, anybody else in his class doesn’t help. He needs this, and Nathan won’t deny him.

“There’s nothing I’m good at I…I’m only good at studying what if I’m not even good at that?”

Warren does look at Nathan then, and Nathan shrugs.

“Whatever,” when this happens, when Warren needs help, telling him the obvious only makes him spiral lower. Acceptance, though, acceptance is what he’s looking for. Nathan can relate to that. “You’ll be good at sitting on the floor, who even cares.”

Warren grabs his hand and Nathan almost bolts. It’s new, but if it makes Warren feel calmer he’ll let him do it. Mostly because he knows that if Nathan told him to let go, he would.

xXx

“I kind of like you,” Warren says, staring at his room’s ceiling, and Nathan stops drumming his fingers on the desk. “Like like you, I mean. It…sounded better in my head?”

The only thing that goes through his head, mild panic aside, is why. Why him, why then, why say it. Why.

He says nothing.

“What do you think?”

That he might like like him back, that this is new and scary, that he doesn’t know how stable he might be, that things can get real ugly real fast, that there are gonna be days when he’s going to stay holed up in his own room, that there are gonna be times when Warren’s going to disappear for weeks to do some nerd shit. That it could all go wrong.

"That it could go to shit real fast.”

Warren snorts.

“Yeah,” he stands, walks to where Nathan’s leaning against the desk and sits by his side. “Wanna try, anyway? It’s ok if you don’t, I…had to try?”

Panic is still there, and uncertainty, but there’s also hope. The tiniest bit. At least Warren isn’t trying to fix it, he’s experienced him at his worst and there he is. It could go to shit, it could work. Won’t know if he doesn’t try, though. He grabs Warren’s hand, stares at his fingers as they cover his.

“Yeah, why the hell not.”


End file.
